


The Road Goes Ever On.

by CallicoKitten



Series: trees and hills they long have known [1]
Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Reincarnation, idk this is dumb, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins dreams of mountains and fire and dragons. Of goblins and gold and trolls and necromancers and wizards. Of elves and friendship and adventure and piercing blue eyes. Of wars and rings.</p><p>But mostly he dreams of dwarves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Goes Ever On.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this gifset on tumblr: http://bilbohs.tumblr.com/post/38298756172/modern-au-in-an-alternate-world-bilbo-baggins
> 
> Poorly written, fluffy and awh.
> 
> Unbeta'd, enjoy!

Bilbo Baggins is thirty years old; he works in a bookshop and rents a small flat in central London. It’s a world away from his quaint country childhood in a small West Midlands village and yeah, it’s not much, but its home. He’s ordinary; short, curly hair, light eyes, a little too snarky for his bosses’ liking but he gets by. 

Yes, there’s nothing extraordinary about Bilbo Baggins. 

Except maybe his dreams.

Bilbo Baggins dreams of mountains and fire and dragons. Of goblins and gold and trolls and necromancers and wizards. Of elves and friendship and adventure and piercing blue eyes. Of wars and rings.

But mostly he dreams of dwarves.

Twelve dwarves.

One in particular. A leader, a true leader.

He knows them all as well as he knows himself, their personalities, their quirks their laughter, their smiles, their tales.

He dreams of other things too. Battles and deaths and things done and said in the darkest of nights that he pushes away, boxes up and doesn’t look at too closely (and if he wakes occasionally achingly hard with someone’s name on his lips than it’s written off because none of it is _real_.)

\-------

He has a girlfriend once, a sweet Australian girl who believes in astrology and psychics who tells listens to his dreams with rapt fascination, who tells him that they’re too strong to just be dreams. Bilbo doesn’t believe in reincarnation and besides, dwarves and dragons and wizards were _never_ real. She left him after a while; apparently he spoke in his sleep.

“There’s someone you love more than me Bilbo Baggins,” she’d said as she packed her bags, a small sad smile on her pretty face. “And I, for one, am not going to stand in the way of it.”

“But I love you!” he’d cried, “They’re just dreams!”

She had smiled again, “Maybe they are. But maybe they’re not. Maybe you’ll find each other again. I hope you do.”

And Bilbo had scowled and slammed the door behind her and cut up photographs and deleted numbers because apparently he can still regress to his teenage years. Most of his relationships ended similarly after all, most women don’t fancy competing with their boyfriend’s imagination for attention. Bilbo understands.

\-------

Sometimes he’ll catch sight of someone in the streets, a pair of young brothers, a kindly old scholar, a man at the pub with a pipe and a silly hat and a quick grin, and he’ll stop, close his eyes. They’re not real (well _they_ are, his _dreams_ aren’t.)

He’ll take a deep breath and try not to imagine them with swords and axes and beards and braids and bows. 

Or blood.

Sometimes in his dreams they’re covered in blood and still as the grave.

He reads somewhere that the people in dreams are always based on people you’ve seen in real life, even if it was just a passing glance. It explains it a little and Bilbo clings to that belief. 

It’s just coincidence.

\-------

He meets someone once, tall and gray ( _Gandalf_ his mind supplies, _Gandalf the Grey_ though that isn’t the man’s name, never was – he’s less haggard than in his dreams, his hair is straighter- whiter, he leans on an old gnarled staff.) He’s hiking in the Peak District, one year out of uni. He’s always felt the itch, the call, the _need_ to explore, to wander but in this modern age he’s constricted by money, duties, responsibilities. He stumbles across the man; they walk together for a time.

“I wish I could just get on a plane,” he says to the man as they walk together. “Go to Europe or America and just walk. Just explore.”

The man smiles, “Why don’t you then?”

And Bilbo laughs, “I can’t just go running off. I have a job, responsibility.” (He remembers this conversation from his dreams – different but the same.) 

“You could quit.” The man says.

“What would I do for food? Money? Shelter?”

The man laughs, a deep, rich, rumble. “You know, Bilbo, I once had a similar conversation with a very old friend.”

“How do you know my name?” Bilbo frowns, he’s certain they never exchanged them.

The man sits up from the fire he’s just started (and Bilbo looks around for matches, a lighter, _anything_ , but finds none) “Why, my dear boy, you told me.”

He didn’t, Bilbo knows he didn’t, but there’s a glint in the old man’s blue eyes that quells the fear bubbling up in his chest. “Have we met before then?”

The man surveys him for a long while. “Perhaps, why do you ask?”

Bilbo shakes his head, “You just...You look like someone I’ve met in dreams.”

The man’s eyes brighten considerably, “Oh?” and he looks at Bilbo expectantly.

Most people laugh at Bilbo’s dreams, make a few choice Dungeons and Dragons jokes, tell him to stop reading those George R.R. Martin books (even though they have _nothing_ in common with Bilbo’s dreams) but somehow he knows this man will not. “Well, you’re sort of, sort of a wizard-thing.”

“Yes?”

“And I’m...Well I’m this thing called a hobbit.”

“A hobbit, you say?”

“Yes. And well, you come, well, you sort of _force_ me in to this adventure to help this bunch of dwarves get their home back from a dragon.”

The man chuckles, but not unkindly. “I should quite like to hear this tale, Mr Baggins.”

Bilbo _knows_ he didn’t tell this old man his last name but he doesn’t really care at that point. He tells the old man his story, from his beginnings in the cosy little house he always aches for to the end with the sound of swords and battle-cries ringing in his ears. He falters when he gets to the end. Not the very end, mind, which has boats and elves and _oh,_ so much beauty, but the end of the battle where there is only silence and blood and _pain._

“And what happens then?” the man asks.

Bilbo sighs tiredly. “He dies. Thorin – he dies.”

The old man tuts. “A shame.” 

And Bilbo nods because yes, it’s a shame but it’s so much more than that. 

“Have you found him yet?” the old man says quite suddenly.

Bilbo frowns at him across the fire; the old man’s face is half obscured in flickering shadows. “Found who?”

“Thorin, of course.”

Bilbo stares. “They’re just dreams.” 

“Are they?”

When Bilbo wakes he can’t recall what they spoke about after that, can’t even recall whether he learnt the man’s name. The fire has burnt down and the man is gone and as Bilbo takes down his tent and rolls up his sleeping bag he wonders for the first time whether he dreamt the man.

\-------

His nephew comes to live with him for a while while he’s studying at uni. A bright lad, curly hair, big blue eyes. There’s only ten years difference between them but still, Bilbo feels endlessly responsible for him.

Freddie laughs whenever Bilbo’s tongue stumbles over his name and it comes out _Frodo._

\-------

It happens on New Year’s Eve at a party.

 _It_ being the impossible.

The book shop Bilbo works at is part of a complex – the book shop shares the bottom floor with a grocery store and a hair salon, the top floors are owned by a big city business company, Bilbo can’t recall what they do though. The New Year’s Eve party is always a multi-company affair taking place on the first floor; Bilbo always goes, usually exhausts himself within the first few hours and spends the rest of the night smoking with a few of the guys or watching the rest of his colleagues make arses of themselves. Sometimes he’ll even fall into bed with Sheena from the hair salon or Arthur from the grocer’s – he’s never been particularly picky about gender.

At first tonight is no different, he’s danced himself out, drank a few too many cocktails and puked his guts out in some poor sod’s office. He’s sitting in a different office, pressing a glass of ice that someone handed to him to his pounding head when he looks up to find he’s not alone.

He almost has a heart attack.

“ _Thorin?_ ”

Thorin grins, perched on the desk in front of him. He’s clean shaven, his hair is short, his clothing much less bulky, but it’s _him_. Bilbo’s heart swells. He’s _here,_ the man, quite literally, of his dreams is _here._ Alive. Real. _I saw you die,_ he wants to say. You can’t be here, you can’t be _real_ but Thorin is still smiling at him and the words fall away.

“H-How?” he stammers. 

Thorin laughs, Bilbo’s heart twinges. It’s been so long since he’s heard him laugh. “No idea. It must be fate.”

Fate indeed. Bilbo stares. Bilbo laughs. _He must be drunker than he first thought_. “You look good, Thorin, really, really good. We should- we should get a drink or something.” he says, moving to stand but stumbling back into the chair when the world pirouettes around him.

Thorin laughs again. “Looks like you’ve already had enough to drink, burglar.”

“Right, right,” Bilbo nods, cheeks colouring. “A coffee then?”

“It’s two a.m,” Thorin points out.

“I have a coffee make at my place,” Bilbo suggests.

Thorin smiles, “Okay then.” And he stands and oh, he’s tall. In Bilbo’s dreams Thorin was always taller than him but he was still a dwarf. He shouldn’t be so tall. Thorin offers him a hand, hefts him upright.

“You got tall,” Bilbo says, stupidly.

Thorin chuckles, “I did. You, not so much.”

Bilbo tries and fails to come up with a witty response to that until Thorin has hauled him down the stairs and pushed him in to a waiting taxi. “Is your name _really_ Thorin here?” he asks after he’s told the cabbie his address.

“Is yours really Bilbo?” Thorin counters as the cab pulls away.

“Yes,” Bilbo says indignantly. After all, Bilbo isn’t _so_ odd, is it? Not as odd as Thorin anyway.

Thorin smiles wryly and then after a few moments he says, “It’s short. Sort of anyway.”

“For what?”

Thorin’s face colours a little. “Thornton.”

“ _Thornton?_ ” Bilbo sniggers.

“My parents were moneyed. Apparently that enables you to give your children silly names without consequence.”

Bilbo chuckles, “Some things never change.”

\-------

They talk all night.

About dragons and dwarves and dreams. Memories, if that’s what they are. 

And when Bilbo tugs Thorin down to claim the taller man’s lips there’s something in him that already knows how to make Thorin groan and there’s something, he thinks, as he watches Thorin sleep, that feels like coming home.


End file.
